As a hunter, i prefer Beast Mastery for leveling because the talents improve my pet, which in turn makes leveling easier because they tank and dps alot for me.

Your almost level 30 which means you can get Dual-spec. Dual-spec means your able to have two specs for 10gold, its cheap and very handy. I use Beast Mastery for questing and solo dungeons runs and Survival for Instances.

I recommend Beast Mastery for questing and Survival for Instances, sadly i havent done much PvP since my hunter is almost level 50, but you should read the talents and look for yourself what suits your playstyle more.

Beast Mastery is the most popular Hunter spec for leveling. Most of your talents give your pet extra life and damage. I personally use this spec because it makes playing a hunter a lot easier, as you can allow your pet to tank the mob and it does about half of your damage. If you are learning a hunter you may not be so great at using the correct abilities and kiting yet, so its a great way to slow down and relax while you're learning. Don't worry, this doesn't mean you do less damage! Just that your damage is more focused from your pet.

Beast Mastery hunters are also able to get exotic pets like the devilsaur and spectral pets with the 31 point talent Beast Mastery, along with 4 extra pet talent points!

Marksmanship focuses on your arrow damage. This means you do more damage personally. I would say this is better for players with the heirlooms as they can get the maximum damage out of their equipment. Your pets scale with your stats also, but I think that shot damage is increased more than pet damage is.

BM is certainly a great spec for leveling due to the extra powers of your pets and is awsome for soloing elites or harder quests.

Marksman comes into it's own when raiding or in groups as the extra dps from your shots is great but for soloing it's a problem as your shots pull aggro too quickly off whatever pet (i.e. tank) you have.

I'd stick with BM for levelling up and trying out different pets etc and spec marksman if you like as your 2nd spec for instances later.

Most definetly BM with a tenacity pet for soloing instances/leveling - my bear's HP-s about 8k and armor way over 8k ;).

I suggest SV with someone from ferocity tree, because of the bonuses your traps get and the dps ain't bad either. In dungeons and instances it is good if you can CC something (e.g a bad pull, caster gone wild etc)- wyren sting/freezing trap and black arror in the end are your only means of CC and with out SV it is only your trusty freezing trap. SV makes loads of damage - I'm either 1st or 2nd according to DPS meters.

But in general just take your talent calc. Reset all your trees via it and start putting points into the tree. See how far you get and how useful one talent or another will be for you.It also depends on what you want to in the end. If you concentrate on soloing BM for sure. If you plan on running instances or pvp only MM or SV. If you plan on soloing and instances BM and SV.Play around with your talents, make a choice. Reseting your talent tree cost practically nothing anyway.

I've got an 85 nelf hunter on burning legion. And from my experience of using both. Beast mastery is best for pvp. And marksmenship is best for dps in pve. Its also great fun getting the rare pets like loque'nahak and deth'tilac :)

If you are looking for the highest DPS spec,it is Survival by a mile(3/7/31 to be exact).

If you want to solo content,it will be MM or BM(i personally solo in MM,talking about instances like TK/EoE/Onyxia/Stonecore or VP mount farm,for easier instances literally everything works aslong as you got MD and Mend Pet glyphs)